This entry garden for the 2009 San Francisco Designer Showcase House was designed to provide a welcoming experience for the stately brick mansion on Pacific Heights. On either side of the broad stone staircase, one encounters double arcs of 12’ columnar European Hornbeam trees. The trees sit in a landscape of 3’ wide alternating bands of yellow ocher decomposed granite and geometric grids of the ornamental grass Carex buchananii. The alternating bands are crisply defined by cor-ten steel headers. At the top of the stairs, a stone bench provides respite for guests upon entering or leaving the house. To the left of the driveway, a vertical garden of ferns, vines, and sedges forms a verdant backdrop for a linear planting of the ornamental grass Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’.